A sojourn of several days, in which other feelings besides those of personal weakness, influenced Lady Marcella to keep her apartment, sufficiently restored the whole party, to enable them to recommence their journey northward without fear of fatigue.
The skill of the Spanish physician, (who united surgery with his medical science,) was so successful with Duke Wharton, that he, too, was pronounced capable of partaking the removal. A litter conveyed him to a hired yacht, which lay at the mouth of the Coquet. This mode of travel was chosen as the easiest for an invalid in his case; and Louis, with Don Garcia and Lorenzo, were his attendants. The wind was fair for Lindisfarne; and the smooth sea, sparkled under a bright noon-day sun, when the little party embarked.
Mr. Athelstone and Ferdinand accompanied the ladies by land. They had set off early in the morning, to travel by easy stages, so as to reach the island before night.
Though no words of mutual confidence on the subjects nearest to the hearts of Cornelia and Marcella, had passed the lips of either, yet each read the secret thoughts of the other, and soothed, or cheered, with a reciprocal delicacy, as amiable as it was salutary. The little taper in the bosom of each, which each covered with the care of a vestal, to conceal, but not to extinguish, gave to its owner the power of discerning the locked mysteries of her friend.
Cornelia had been benumbed with horror, when she first discovered that the noble invalid she had cherished as some illustrious foreigner, worthy to be loved by her virtuous cousin,—was the Duke of Wharton!—Illustrious, indeed, in birth, and station, and talents; noble in figure, and beloved by her cousin!—But the man, of all others in the world, whom she had most abhorred for the abuse of those faculties, which had been so richly bestowed, and so shamefully abandoned to the worst of purposes. She stood aghast at herself when she found, that she now not only knew him to be that reprobated Wharton, but that when he should close his eyes in death, (which was then hourly expected,) the world would then be a desert to her.
It was in the moment when Mr. Athelstone flashed it at once upon her mind, who was her guest, that as soon as the venerable man had left her to herself, she exclaimed in the agony of such a recognition,—
"Oh, Wharton! what the Prophet said of the Prince of Tyre, may too surely be said of thee: Thou didst seal up the sum! Full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty! Thou wast prosperous in thy ways, from the day thou wast created, until iniquity was found in thee. And, now, they draw the sword against the beauty of thy wisdom. They defile thy brightness, and bring down thy glory to the ashes of the grave!"
And who dare lament over such a grave? There is no sympathy for her who deplores a dishonoured name. There is no pity for her who weeps that the traitor is no more. She must glide by stealth to that lonely tomb. Her tears must fall in solitude on the trackless path; and, when lying on the neglected sod, there she may cry to Him alone, whose eye is over all, to pity and to pardon erring man!
"And so, Wharton!" exclaimed she, "I will lament and pray for thee!"
But, when her uncle informed her that this once offending and deprecated Wharton, regretted, with religious contrition, the transgressions of his youth, the severest pangs in her bosom were laid to rest; and she resumed what she believed her last duties about the dying patient, with a chastised tenderness, as soothing as it was pure from any earthly sentiment.